Cheap Six & Seven (Music) (The Soft Machine) Price

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Customer Reviews of Six & Seven

Late Soft Machine
1970-71 were turbulent years for Soft Machine with many comings and goings, notably the departure of Robert Wyatt and Elton Dean. For most people that was the end of the story and it is often forgotten that there was a distinctive late edition of the band in 72-74, featuring regulars Ratledge and Hopper joined by drummer John Marshall and multi-instrumentalist Karl Jenkins, which recorded two final albums for CBS. <
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>"Six" was a double album - in the vogue of the time one disc live / one disc studio, all included on a single CD here. Arguably this was the most musically accomplished version of the band. The live album is one long suite, effortlessly gliding back and forth through tunes and themes (mostly drawn from "FIFTH"). It's very tight and fluid, driven by understated, shifting funk or rock rhythmic patterns. The studio album contains just four tracks. "Sot Weed Factor" and "Chloe" are developments out of the languorous style pioneered on parts of "THIRD": Terry Riley-ish loops, loping repetitive funk drum and bass, tinkling keyboards. Jenkins generally eschews jazzy improv, preferring to overlay the tracks with elegant, repetitive, extended lines on oboe or soprano. <
>It's an over-used word but I'd have to describe this music as "cool". It's a far cry from the hyperactive fusion music of the 70s and might even prefigure some of the ambient, trance and trip-hop of the 90s. The cool-muzak sensibility even reminds me sometimes of Air (well, Soft Machine always were big in France!). The other two studio tracks are busier, sounding like sketches for compositions and don't stand up so well. <
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>The suspicion that the composing was in decline is confirmed on "SEVEN". Apparently recorded in a hurry and with Hopper replaced by Roy Babbington on bass, the first half relies too much on manic riff-based fusion cliché. There's also one track plagiarized wholesale from MacLaughlin's "EXTRAPOLATION". The second half reverts to the cool trancey mode which, personally, I quite like. Bizarrely Karl Jenkins is now Britain's most popular living classical composer (of the "new age" variety I believe). <
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>This 2CD reissue is tackily packaged and has a liner note which goes on about Canterbury and swinging London and has little to do with the actual music on these albums or its context. No bonus cuts. But it is cheap and, given that "SIX" was a double album, not bad value. It usefully rounds up the late era Soft Machine and as such is recommended to fans. <
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